I'm a little cheesed off with HSBC at the moment. My regular savers with First Direct and HSBC both came up for renewal together at the start of this month. As usual, I applied to renew them both and made the appropriate first payment funds available. This went fine with First Direct which opened my new account and transferred my initial deposit the same day.

However, after nothing appeared to happen with HSBC a letter arrived a week later asking me to visit a branch with proof of address. So I did that without delay. Now another week later and after no apparent progress, I've just received another letter from HSBC asking me to go into branch again, this time with proof of identity! Why didn't they ask last time -- even unprepared I could've handed over my drivers licence? Or call me instead of spending weeks sending letters? Pretty poor service - with bank holidays coming up it'll end up taking nearly a month just to renew my HSBC regular saver, despite having already done so many times previously!

ok good work Sarah... perhaps i should be pushing them re. mine too.my Nationwide RegSav matures in a month's time. they have emailed me and the 5% rate is still available as an option, so i shall have another slice of that. Nationwide/M&S/HSBC all keep my savings as long as they maintain 5%.. below that i think i'll just commit more to invest long-term.